WASHINGTON — The elusive dusky gopher frog — confined not long ago to a single pond in Mississippi — will get its day in court.

The Supreme Court.

The justices on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's designation of private land in Louisiana as "critical habitat" to protect a breed of frog from extinction.

The dispute involves a Louisiana company that says the designation of 1,544 acres of forested land in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, reduces its value by $20 million to $34 million — even though it no longer contains any dusky gopher frogs.

"Absent this court’s intervention, the Service’s vast expansion of its power through this misreading of the statute will impose massive costs on landowners," Weyerhaeuser Co. argued in court papers.

A dozen other organizations lent their support to overturning a federal appeals court's decision upholding the habitat designation, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Home Builders, American Farm Bureau and 18 states.

On the other side is the Trump administration, representing the Fish and Wildlife Service. To protect the frog species, it says additional land with characteristics similar to its Mississippi habitat must be protected.

"Historical records showed that the frog previously inhabited several counties or parishes in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi," the Justice Department told the court. "By the time of the listing in 2001, however, the Service identified only one population still in existence: approximately 100 adult frogs at a single pond in Mississippi."

Since then, the government said, two more small populations of frogs have been discovered nearby in Mississippi, and a fourth group was established with human intervention. It eventually designated four Mississippi counties as habitat, later adding the disputed parcel in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana.

"The habitat occupied by the frog remained highly localized and fragmented, and the Service cautioned that the frog still faced a high risk of extinction from a drought or other random event," the government argued.

"The Service properly determined — and petitioners do not dispute — that a designation of critical habitat limited to the areas occupied by the dusky gopher frog at the time it was listed as endangered would be inadequate to ensure the conservation of the species."